Juneteenth Cometh

painting by John Phillip Simpson

 Juneteenth Cometh

“Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Ernest Hemingway (1926)

Diversity

in Art and Life

is a driving force,

and yet...

If you were born white

in the America

of the 40’s,

you had a Mt. Everest of inequity

to climb, to overcome.

White privilege was a given.

In 1962,

in my High School

in White Center, a suburb of Seattle,

there were only two black students

in my graduating class.

To be a bigot was hip.

To do otherwise meant

you were a nigger-lover.

Cruel black humor was vogue.

“Did you hear about the colored dude who drown

last week?”   “Yeah, ain’t that just like a nigger

to steal more chain than he could swim with?”

Then came the 60’s

with Viet Nam, Civil Rights, and college.

Thankfully, my eyes were opened

and I had to tolerate the bitter taste

of my shame for years.

I made black friends,

I dated black women,

I studied black history,

I gave up hillbilly rock and roll

for jazz and the blues

until my prejudices began

to subside and erode.

In the last fifty years,

we have made measurable progress,

but in the tepid wake

of Trump’s narcissism, populism, fascism,

sexism, and naked unabashed racism,

I see America profoundly divided.

I have always leaned left in my politics,

and I believed in and championed

women’s rights, LBGT issues, civil rights
and the breathless beauty

of interracial children.

I still believe in the equality of all men,

the Marxist dream (though never a reality)

of a classless society,

but in the face of capitalist greed,

dark money, crooked dishonest politicians,

white supremacy, domestic and international

terrorism, and of course the grand chasm

between the top 1% who own everything

and the rest of us, I wonder

if the bloody daggers of division

will ever be sheathed?

I sincerely hope so,

but I really doubt

I will live to see it.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at d'Verse Poet's Pub